The Piper (23 page)

‘You hang on to that.' Dr Raymond thought for a moment. ‘But you are going to have to steel yourself for the long haul. Teddy and I have a lot of things to sort out.'

‘Yeah. Voices in her head and ghosts in the house.'

‘Just remember that a ghost is a common, almost universal fear. So it's a very normal manifestation of other things that are bothering her. Once we get to the other things and deal with them, then the ghost will go away.'

N
either Olivia nor Teddy had much to say as Olivia backed the Jeep out of the Chambliss Place parking lot and onto the street. Even Winston was subdued. It was a mere three minute drive to the house, and Teddy sat quietly in the front seat, twisting her hands. Olivia had never seen her do that before.

They pulled into the driveway, just as dusk was settling to dark.

Olivia hesitated. She did not like leaving Teddy out here. Maybe it would be best to get Teddy settled into a hotel room and come back later, alone.

‘Teddy—'

‘Just hurry, Mommy, okay?'

Stick to the plan. She had agreed. ‘Stay right here in the car with Winston, keep the doors locked, and don't open them until I come back.'

Teddy nodded and the look on her face broke Olivia's heart. She looked so much like the old Teddy, the little girl she'd been before the divorce.

‘I'll be fast,' Olivia said.

Olivia went through the front door instead of the back, so Teddy could see her. She thought, as she often did, how odd the front door was, the awkward way it was hung, so that it hit the wall on the left and would not open all the way. She turned on the lights in each room she went through, leaving the shutters open so Teddy could see her from outside. And so she could see Teddy. She waved and thought she saw Teddy raise a hand.

The house had that same feel of
presence
, like it had since Amelia died.

Down to business.

Olivia dragged two suitcases out of the closet in the hall, bouncing them up the stairs to the bedrooms. She flipped the light switches as she went, hating the way the lights came on, those damned economy lights, just a glow at first, barely lighting the room, as they warmed up and grew brighter in tiny increments. The house felt different upstairs. Heavy with something she could not see. Almost like a fog. She was actually relieved to be going to a hotel.

She'd start in Teddy's room. The door was shut tight but the light was already on, she could see the line of brightness under the door. She hesitated, shook her head, and went inside.

Teddy had made her bed very neatly, her stuffed animals arranged around the pillows. A contrast to the carnage – every dresser drawer hanging open, underwear, tee shirts, jeans and socks in a snarl all over the floor, as if someone had ripped the drawers open in a fury and dumped them.

‘Good God,' Olivia said.

Olivia knew that if she asked Teddy about this, she would blame it on Duncan Lee. She wouldn't mention it. She'd tell Dr Raymond, day after tomorrow, when she took Teddy back.

But there was anger here. Such anger. Olivia choked out a small sob and picked up jeans and tee shirts off the floor, stuffing them into the bag. There was something very wrong with her little girl.

Her own things she left on hangers, draping them over Teddy's suitcase. She looked up once at the attic fan. It took up a four by four section of the ceiling, the dusty monolithic motor looming behind the rusting brown grill. There was a switch on the wall, and she felt the unexpected urge to turn it on. She didn't. She headed for the bathroom, packing up makeup and Teddy's favorite bubble bath. Amelia's things were still on the counter tops. Olivia tried not to look at them.

She was in a hurry, her packing was sloppy. The suitcases were heavy and awkward, and Olivia wrestled them down the stairs, the hangers with her expensive black sheaths, skirts and blazers slung over one arm. Dammit, she needed shoes. Back upstairs, fast, just that other pair, then running right back down on the slippery, polished wood, holding tight to the rail.

Olivia looked out the sunroom window at Teddy. Still there. Still okay. Winston sitting up front in the driver's seat.

There were clothes in the dryer, most of her lingerie that she washed on the delicate cycle in a little net bag. She wouldn't go far without clean bras and panties. Grab those and call it a day.

The basement door was open a crack, as if inviting her in, and Olivia tried to remember if she'd left it that way. She flipped on every light in the kitchen, and went down slowly, the light streaming in from behind, illuminating the paint chipped, open backed stairs. She held her breath until she found the switch about halfway down, and flipped on the light. A regular light bulb, this one. The basement lit up in a flick.

The dryer light was on, a red pinpoint glow that let her know the cycle was finished and her clothes were ready. No doubt the warning buzzer had gone off the usual three times at five minute intervals while she'd been at work. The mundane normality made her feel better. The dryer door creaked when she opened it, and she reached in for the bag. The clothes were dry, and crackling with static electricity, emitting the faint sweet scent of the lavender fabric softener she used.

She shut the dryer door, and was heading for the stairs when she heard the thump.

Olivia turned around slowly, feeling a tingle of tension at the base of her spine. The noise had come from behind her, somewhere close, definitely right there in the basement. She looked from corner to corner. Stacks of damp, moldy boxes, the old washer and dryer Charlotte had left behind, perched on a platform of bricks along the back of the wall, collecting dust.

The thump came again, no mistaking it, just a few feet away. Olivia did not move. She held her breath. Waited. And once more, a thump, and she pegged it now, coming from the dryer. Had something got trapped inside?

She knew it would keep her awake that night, the thought of some bird or squirrel, maybe even a stray cat, a small one, a feral kitten. Coming in from outside through the dryer's vent, and getting trapped inside. Suffocating slowly, afraid in the dark.

Except there was no vent, not now. The dryer was disconnected and stacked and covered with that peculiar mix of greasy basement dust, shoved up on bricks against the wall.

Fuck it. Olivia crossed the room and opened the dryer door.

She dropped the clothes. Not a snake, no, the way it was coiled there in the bottom of the dryer gave that impression, but no snake had a buckle, no snake was bright red. It was a belt. A long, red leather belt.

And the memory of Teddy's voice flashed through her head.
There's a ghost there, Mommy, you have to believe me, there's a ghost. He's going to hang Winston from the attic fan with a red leather belt.
And then Dr Raymond.
It's not Winston anymore. Now it's you. She's convinced that Duncan Lee is going to hang you with that red leather belt.

‘Jesus,' Olivia said. She turned and ran up the stairs.

Two things happened, all at once. Every single light in the house went out, and a dog began to bark.

O
livia realized what a terrible thing it was, to know, and to believe. Teddy had been facing that alone. She muttered half sobbing apologies to her daughter as she went up the stairs. She made herself go slow, she made herself hold the rail, she even reached out for the switch and cried a bit when her fingers tracked the plastic nub that was clearly in the on position. One light bulb might go out like that, but not every single one in the house.

The joy she felt was unexpected and exhilarating. It was the house that was fucked up, not her little girl. Dr Raymond had known right away that Teddy had a good, compassionate heart. And whatever bad presence there was in this house, whatever this thing was, it had been
after
Teddy. Charlotte had been right all along.

Whatever this thing was that was after her daughter, Dr Raymond was right. Step one was getting out of the house. Olivia realized, with the perspective that people get when the bottom truly drops out, that the jobs and the moves, the arguments with Hugh and the pressures of money, these were nothing. Nothing, so long as she and her little girl were safe.

The barking dog was frantic now, hysterical. It sounded like the stray she and Teddy had seen the other night. Winston picked it up. Olivia knew his sharp, panicked yelp. Two of them now, barking their heads off.

The basement door was shut tight, though she had left it wide open. Olivia banged her head into it in the dark, tripping on the top step, and bruising the crap out of her shin. She slammed her fist into the wood and jerked the knob and it opened easily. She scrambled up into the dark kitchen. She'd left the Jeep's headlights flipped on, and she could see the arc of light like a homing beacon outside.

But the back door off the kitchen was stuck.

Olivia kicked it hard, and turned the knob. Yes, yes, she'd unlocked it, and it came open an inch, then wouldn't budge. This had happened before; she always had trouble with this door. Her hands shook and she trembled all over, but she just needed to keep her head, and pull, not push.

Then she heard him. The dog. Whining right at the door, could it be Winston? Out of the car? Or the stray? The dog started scratching, frantic, almost throwing itself at the door, and Olivia heard a crack and a sprinkle of glass. The kitchen window had shattered. All hell was breaking loose.

Olivia kicked the bottom of the door again to jolt it loose and pulled hard, felt the door give reluctantly, felt the blessed rush of air. Out she went, not bothering to close it behind.

And she saw him, the dog in the moonlight, loping toward the fountain. And seeing him up close for the very first time, she recognized the unusual brindle markings, and knew, before the dog even turned its head and looked back at her, that this was Hunter, Emily's dog. Which was ridiculous of course, because Hunter had to be dead, dead for years and years. She was just rattled. No time for this now.

Olivia knew she ought to go slow, that she could stumble and twist an ankle in the dark, but she ran anyway, to the headlights, to the car, high on the joy of freedom, now that she was out of the house.

The doors to the Jeep were shut, just as she'd left them, so it took her a minute of staring dumbly to understand. It was as if she were outside her body observing the hysterical panicked woman who opened the door of the Jeep and found the front seat empty. No daughter, no dog. The woman cried, and ran to the fountain, around the house, and down to the street. She even went back into the house. The lights worked again, and she went through every room, mouth in an almost comic oval of disbelief before she opened her cell phone and dialed 911.

But Teddy and Winston were gone. Not a sign of either of them, just like all those years ago, when Emily and Hunter disappeared.

I
n a very tiny space in the back of Olivia's mind she was aware of the news crews gathering in little clusters outside her house. Of the television station that had set up a yellow canopy supported with white poles right on the curb. She could hear how the cars on the street outside slowed as they passed in front of her home. She was aware of the neighbors gathering in the corners of her yard.

Inside the house every light was on, and there were temporary but powerful spotlights rigged up outside. The driveway and the streets were crammed with cop cars, blue lights flashing, yellow police tape. She was grateful for the activity, what little of it she could absorb. She would have liked to be involved somehow, to help, it was her baby girl, but she was held captive by the noise in her head, the effort it took just to breathe, as if she were in the grip of a silent tornado while everyone around her was still.

She was familiar with the clinical symptoms of shock, so she understood why she shivered and felt like ice, in spite of the blanket that the uniformed police officer who responded to her call had wrapped around her shoulders. Officer Rodriguez had radioed in for detectives and backup within ten minutes of listening to her panicked explanation.

She'd drunk up all the water they'd brought her, though Rodriguez had needed to help her with the glass, and she was still thirsty, but could somehow not find the words to ask for more. She felt a constant buzzing at the base of her skull, and she knew it would be unwise to try and stand.

Teddy's name seemed to pulse with every beat of her heart, and it took all of her concentration to sit on the couch, to go from one terrible thought to the next. Olivia knew what was coming. She had lived through this before. She did not want this pain, not again. She would live it now as a mother, which meant that this time it would be so much worse.

Her own mother had kept a journal, after Emily and Hunter disappeared. Olivia had read the tear streaked pages years ago, curious about the way her mother's handwriting had changed over the days, months, then years. Olivia had tried her hardest to forget that chronicle of the no man's land where her family had dwelled, had done a pretty good job, actually, because now, all she knew for sure was that she was now in a place so dark, so arid and comfortless, that it would take everything she had to survive. And for Teddy's sake, she had to survive.

When Olivia was a little girl, she had been ashamed. Her family was different, her parents had to struggle just to make it through the day. They were isolated from the rest of the world, exiled to a public place of pain where people watched their every move, hungry, some of them, to feed voraciously upon a tragedy that could be held at arm's length, some just curious, and others, lots of others, clueless but well meaning and concerned.

Her mother and father spent years learning how to recreate a normal place for Chris and Olivia to grow up in, to compartmentalize their time, juggling the search for a missing child with the need for a family to build a new life, the basic realities of eating, sleeping, breathing in and out. Holidays had to be reconstructed, new traditions set, all the while meals needed to be cooked, there was laundry to fold, a mortgage to pay. Her father had cried like a baby when he had to go back to work.